In a continent where art is increasingly shaping identity, memory, and urban experience, Nigerian metal sculptor Dotun Popoola is preparing to deliver one of the most anticipated cultural moments of 2026. His upcoming solo exhibition in Abuja as he promised will not just be an art show, but a city-wide encounter with reclaimed beauty, heritage, and imagination. And he readily askedAbuja are you ready???

Words Ireho Aito | Don’t Keep Your Art in the Finger!

For Dotun Popoola, 2025 was a year of motion and monumental scale. His commissions stretched from private and institutional collections to public installations that turned everyday spaces into cultural landmarks. From works unveiled at KAP Film Village and Resort to installations that animated the festive pulse of Lagos and Ghana during Detty December, the sculptor’s presence was impossible to ignore. Perhaps most symbolic was the Lagos State commissioned Eyo monument at the John Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History, a towering tribute to the iconic masquerade and the city’s layered cultural memory. With this installation, Popoola did more than sculpt metal, he forged a visual language for Lagos identity.

Now, the artist is turning his gaze toward Abuja. In a characteristically bold announcement to his followers, Popoola, the founder of Scrap Art Museum, a museum that has welcomed close to 10,000 visitors from Nigerians, Europeans, Americans down to technocrats, collectors and diplomats described the forthcoming exhibition as a “shutdown” event. This exhibition is the one designed to bring people into direct contact with his works many have only encountered through screens and online. For a generation that scrolls past art more often than it stands before it, this exhibition offers something rare, it offers the chance to see, touch, and feel the textures of reclaimed metal transformed into human stories.

Abuja, is more often defined by its political architecture and measured geometry, but will host a different kind of monumentality that is rooted in improvisation, sustainability, and African futurism.

Popoola’s work sits at the intersection of environmental consciousness and cultural storytelling. Scrap metal, discarded machinery, and industrial remnants become masks, figures, and monumental forms that speak to migration, resilience, and identity.

Beyond the sculptures themselves, the Abuja exhibition is envisioned as an immersive cultural moment. Visitors are expected from across Nigeria and the diaspora, transforming the show into a meeting point for collectors, creatives, and curious citizens. The message is clear that African art is not confined to galleries, rather, it lives in public squares, festivals, and the shared imagination of its people. It is our living memory.

Across Africa, a new generation of artists is redefining how cities see themselves. Public art is no longer decorative but declarative. It asserts presence, preserves memory, and invites participation. Dotun Popoola’s Abuja exhibition arrives at a time when cultural infrastructure is expanding and audiences are eager for experiences that reflect their stories. In bringing monumental sculpture into civic space, he reminds us that art is not separate from daily life, in fact, it is the lens through which we understand it.

If Lagos was the prelude, Abuja may well be the crescendo. For those who have admired his work from afar, this exhibition offers rare proximity. For the city, it is an opportunity to host a defining cultural event. For Africa, it is another affirmation that its artists are shaping global conversations with one reclaimed fragment at a time. The Dotun Popoola show is coming, and Abuja will feel it.

iBAND Magazine, Celebrating Visual Arts from the Original.
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